Donald Trump has broken with the pro-lifers who have long been one of his most important—if unlikely—sources of support. On Thursday, he announced that he would make in-vitro fertilization free, perhaps by mandating coverage in insurance plans. This move would force American taxpayers, religious employers, or both to pay for a procedure that involves the creation—and presumptive destruction—of surplus embryos. It would constitute a violation of conscience more grave than that involved in ObamaCare’s contraceptive mandate (which Joe Biden, then serving as Barack Obama’s vice president, internally opposed).
The same day, Trump was asked if he would vote for a constitutional amendment in Florida that would allow abortion through all nine months of pregnancy—something Trump has long claimed to oppose. Without explicitly answering the question, he said, “I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks”—indicating disagreement with the state’s current six-week ban. (Marjorie Dannenfelser, a leading pro-life activist, later said she had spoken with Trump privately, and the former president had “not committed” to how he would vote on the amendment.)
These moves, coming on the heels of other efforts to marginalize pro-life concerns, indicate that Trump is replacing the GOP’s pro-life outlook with a natalist one. The two ideas might seem identical, but they differ in an important way. A strictly natalist outlook, concerned above all with boosting birth rates and creating more babies, can accept the destruction of surplus embryos created through IVF. A pro-life outlook cannot. As I observed when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán embraced a similar IVF policy, “‘family values’ do not always align with Christian faith”—let alone with opposition to the taking of unborn life.
It is possible that Trump will retreat from these stances, but for now, he seems to have decided that pro-lifers are his party’s primary liability. This conviction reflects polling that shows that Democrats are more trusted on the issue of abortion, but it ignores the fact that for many Republicans, abortion hasn’t been a major liability. As Ramesh Ponnuru has noted, “even in the immediate aftermath of Roe’s overturning, no pro-life Republican governor or senator lost an election”—including several governors who signed restrictive abortion bills.
Cutting pro-lifers out of the Republican coalition would mark an important change for Trump. While free-marketeers and foreign-policy hawks dug in against Trump because of his heresies against conservative orthodoxy in 2016, pro-lifers gradually came around to his cause. They may not have regarded him as one of their own, but they were grateful for his willingness to make explicit promises while speaking about abortion in direct terms.
Trump promised to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. This was a significant promise for pro-life voters. Another important moment came in his final debate with Hillary Clinton, when he declared, “If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.” This was probably the most explicit description of abortion ever offered to an American primetime audience.
The latter episode in particular revealed the surprising strengths Trump brought to the abortion debate. His lack of concern for verbal niceties at times seemed to help the pro-life cause. Then Trump’s judges actually overturned Roe v. Wade. All this was enough to chasten, or even change the minds of, some who believed that Trump was an unsuitable standard-bearer for abortion opponents.
“The long-term effects may prove less advantageous.”
Now, however, Trump seems determined to marginalize the portion of the conservative movement that was most willing to embrace him. What will the likely consequences be? It may boost his chances in November, preventing America from coming under the sway of the abortion extremism of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. But even if the GOP enjoys an immediate boost in polling and electoral performance, the long-term effects may prove less advantageous.
Pro-lifers are an important part of the Republican Party’s activist and intellectual class. If they were to be sidelined, other activists and intellectuals would take their place. Some might be devoted to deeply unpopular ideas like cutting entitlements. Others might be interested in the racial and political ideologies associated with the anti-Christian right. How appealing to the broad center of American life would such a party be?
As a simple electoral matter, Trump’s rise hasn’t yet meant the emergence of a post-religious right. But his recent abortion moves raise the possibility that Ross Douthat’s most famous tweet may yet be proved right.